"What the heck? That arm can talk?!" Guan Yu said with an astonished look on his face.
"It can talk alright! Brother, it talks even louder than you!" Halls said jokingly as he led the skeletons around on a small chase. Luckily, none of the skeletons were anywhere near as fast as the Puppet Chained Assassins, therefore, Halls had a much easier time maintaining a safe distance.
However, he made sure to not stray too far away and still receive a few attacks so that he would not lose the aggro on the creatures. Since Luna was currently out of commission, Halls would have to rely on sustaining himself without the heals of a healer.
Needless to say, he could not be as reckless and straight forward in his attacks as he had been before.
"Loud? Hmph, I'll have you know that I'm the three-time champion of being loud!" Guan Yu shouted at the top of his lungs as a grin found its way onto his face afterward. He reached the twenty meters mark and held out the Half Mark Sealing Totem, pointing it directly towards the small portal.
The Half Mark Sealing Totem was no bigger than 20cm and had the faces of three unknown creatures that looked to be from an ancient period of time. It was made out of strong magical wood and there were multiple inscriptions placed upon the back area of the totem.
"You two- You can still fool around even during a time like this?" Zi Yi said as she shook her head and positioned herself exactly twenty meters away from the small portal with one of the Half Mark Sealing Totems in her hands.
Zi Yi and Guan Yu activated the sealing totems as countless strands of soft and gentle streams of pure white magical energy drifted towards the portal in the near distance. The white strands of energy danced in the air as they headed in the direction of the portal and as they did so, the white strands began to twirl around one another and weave together.
Every time a new strand was weaved into the mix, the level of power would increase exponentially. While the magical energy itself may have appeared gentle to those who saw it, the vast amount of pure energy that was harnessed within every individual strand was astonishing.
By the time the white strands reached the portal, it had transformed into a beam of white light. However, if one looked close enough, they could still see the countless strands dancing about and weaving together within the white light.
The moment the white light from both Half Mark Sealing Totems made contact with the portal, the portal itself began to destabilize and had its structural integrity compromised. The portal than began to shrink and close at a rate of 2cm per second, however, as the seconds ticked by, the rate of the portal's closure was increasing rapidly.
The skeletons that were chasing after Halls came to an abrupt halt and turned their attention towards Zi Yi and Guan Yu. To be more accurate, their focus was more on the Half Mark Sealing Totems that were being used. No matter how much threat level Halls had managed to build up, it was useless compared to the threat the Half Mark Sealing Totems possessed to the Netherworld creatures.
The elite skeleton, as well as, the weaker group changed their target to Zi Yi and Guan Yu as they sprinted at full speed. The sound of their bones rattling could be heard as they charged over.
Woosh!
However, before they could even reach the two, a blade had descended upon one of the Undead Netherworld Skeletons that was located at the front of the group. That blade came from inside of a spatial rift as a figure shot out right behind it.
Soon after, that same blade swept the other eleven normal skeletons. In the blink of an eye, the only skeleton that remained standing was the sole elite monster, the Undead Netherworld Skeletal Beast.
Izroth stood before the elite monster and blocked its path. Mariposa had used a spatial rift to send Izroth over as per his request. He then used the same technique as earlier to deal with the weak skeletons. As long as his First Baneful Sword: Destruction was off cooldown, he could one shot the weaker skeletons and reset the cooldown timer for the skill.
'It can even be used in this manner… Interesting.'
Izroth knew that Mariposa was capable of allowing a group to pass through the spatial rifts and travel to different locations. However, those type of skills were usually reserved for out of combat skills. Therefore, the fact that she was even able to use such a skill in the middle of combat would be a nightmare for almost anyone to face.
According to Mariposa, due to the way spatial magic functioned within RML, it was not something she could do often considering that she had only learned how to do so after leaving the Chaotic Dogma Realm. Her mastery of spatial magic was still a "drop in the ocean of knowledge" as she stated.
'I will have to use some spare time to look a bit more into the magic of this world.'
The bones from the skeletons that Izroth defeated suddenly rushed towards the elite monster and attached itself to the creature's skeletal frame. The Undead Netherworld Skeletal Beast now looked like a bizarre chimera with the way the bones were latched onto its frame.
Its appearance was not the only thing that changed, but its overall power, as well as, its HP also increased. Now, the HP of the elite monster was 96,396. That was nearly twice as much as its original HP value.
"Its HP seemed to increase every time one of the weaker skeleton creatures were eliminated. If its power has also increased, then we should consider eliminating it first in the future before dealing with the weaker skeletons." Mariposa stated.
Even with Izroth blocking its path, the Undead Netherworld Skeletal Beast did not decrease its speed and continued to charge towards Guan Yu who was the closest one with a Half Mark Sealing Totem.
"Have you forgotten about me already you bag of bones?!" Halls roared as he approached the skeletal beast at a great speed and crashed into its body with his shield leading the charge.
BANG!
With such a big and easy target to hit, how could Halls not take advantage of Unimpeded Rush to quickly close the distance and stop the skeletal beast in its tracks? After his attack was successful, the skeletal beast was stunned in place for two seconds and unable to act.
Since the skeletal beast would prioritize Zi Yi and Guan Yu no matter what, it was up to Izroth, Halls, and Mariposa to prevent it from laying a single boney finger on them.
Oooooooom!
All of a sudden, a second portal not too far away from the first, began to slowly expand. It had been less than 10 seconds and yet a second portal was already beginning to open up!
On the bright side, the portal appeared to be expanding at a slow and steady rate of 15cm per second. If it needed to grow to the same size as the portal they were trying to currently close in order to become functional, then they would have around twenty seconds give or take before it was operational.
"Another portal is already starting to open and we haven't even sealed this one yet." Zi Yi said with a frown. The deathly energy building up around the portal was visible to the naked eye and so one could clearly see and hear the second portal expanding.
"Then, we'll just have to hurry up and finish this one." Izroth said in a carefree manner as he kicked off his back foot and launched towards the skeletal beast with his Sword of The Storm in his hands.
…
Meanwhile, as Izroth and his party were dealing with the skeletal beast and sealing the first portal, Gear and the mysterious arm had yet to make a move against one another. It was not that Gear was afraid to make a move, it was just that Tererestiaa was still taking care of Luna not too far away from him.
If he went on the offensive now then without a doubt, that massive arm would immediately go after the two behind him without hesitation. Therefore, he was simply biding his time until Tererestiaa finished up.
"It's still not too late for you, old monster. If you retreat back to the Netherworld, you may just get to keep your arm this day. Otherwise, I'm sure there are many people who would pay handsomely for your arm." Gear said with a slight smile on his face.
"You humans are all the same. It is why your destruction is inevitable. Your kind always strives to reach its hand beyond that which it is capable of grasping into its own palm. Come, let us see how you take the arm of I, Nekrostalmenos, the eternal envoy of the Netherworld." The voice beyond the portal spoke in a cold tone of voice.
That voice turned out to belong to the person who this tomb was built for! The tomb of Nekrostalmenos, Envoy of the Netherworld! Who knew that the owner of this tomb was such a powerful existence? He was not the ruler of the Netherworld, but an envoy. If that was the case, how powerful was the existence that ruled over the Netherworld?
Gear's strength was unquestionable considering he was one of the seven heroes who survived a fight against that monstrous Shadahi who had almost approached the divine realm. Even though they did not win the actual battle, they still managed to greatly weaken it. He was also able to escape with life intact against such a creature which was an incredible feat in and of itself.
For a few seconds, there was nothing but silence between Gear and Nekrostalmenos. However, out of nowhere, one could feel a cold draft within the underground chambers. But, this was not due to something natural like wind sneaking into the underground chambers.
At the same time that draft snuck into the chambers, Gear's figure became distorted and blurry as it started to constantly flicker in and out of existence. To the outside eye, it appeared that Gear and Nekrostalmenos remained motionless. However, that was as far from the truth as possible.
In the blink of an eye, Nekrostalmenos used one of his massive fingers to target Tererestiaa and Luna who were practically defenseless, more than twenty times! It was actually able to move one of his fingers at such an incredible speed that the sound was unable to keep up with it!
However, Gear was already prepared for this as he used the back palm of his hand to slap away all twenty of the creature's attacks effortlessly.
Woooo… BOOM!
After a few seconds passed, the sound finally caught up to their movements and a loud thunderclap noise reverberated throughout the underground chambers causing a strong gust of wind to blow out in almost all directions.
By the time things settled down, one could see Gear standing tall in front of Tererestiaa and Luna with the back of his palm pressed up against the huge finger that Nekrostalmenos attacked with! One had to know that Nekrostalmenos' finger alone was more than three times the size of Gear!
"You seem to know so much about humans, however, you seem to be forgetting one very important fact about our kind." Gear said as his strength began to rise and an overbearing aura started to gather around his body.
When he felt Gear's power rising, Nekrostalmenos immediately attempted to pull back from his attack, however, it was too late.
"Most of us are rather overprotective of our children." Gear stated as with a small flick of his wrist, a large stream of black liquid began to pour from the finger of Nekrostalmenos!
"You dare!" Nekrostalmenos' roared and caused the small tremors to turn into a full-scale earthquake! He was infuriated by the fact that a mere human had dared to lay a hand on him.
Nekrostalmenos had managed to pull his hand back, however, there was something very important missing from it that Gear was currently holding in one of his hands.
"I dare! There are some things you can't touch, old man. You still have four more of these, however, for how long is another story." Gear said in a nonchalant manner. At the moment, he was holding that huge finger that belonged to Nekrostalmenos over his head with one arm! Gear had ripped off one of the envoy's fingers!
